Making Sure
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU - Instead of leaving LV-426, Ripley and the others realise they have to destroy the Engineer ship carrying the remaining eggs, but they also make a terrifying discovery...


Disclaimer - I don't Alien or any part of the franchise. I got this idea from Marcus S. Lazarus' Doctor at War Ending the Xenomorph where the War Doctor destroyed the eggs the Queen had left as a present, which led to the events in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.

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* * *

Making Sure.

After making sure Dwayne was ensconced in Medical, Ellen Ripley had taken Bishop to the technical section of the Sulaco to get him checked out after the android had been torn in half by the Alien Queen, and Ellen found herself pushing her own technical skills to the test; synthetic engineering was not her forte, but she had worked with synthetics often enough over the years to get some insight into how they worked, and while Bishop was a far more advanced and superior model compared to androids like Ash (she would not think of him, she fought to remember, recalling the way the android had been protecting that alien, only to nearly try to kill her when she'd made the discovery of the Company's orders), synthetic technology still worked on the same basic principles.

While she was working Newt was standing quietly off to the side, her face still grimy from her enforced need to stay a step ahead of the Aliens which had destroyed her home, killed her family, and used as incubators for their spawn, still dressed in the dirty rags she'd been wearing for heaven knew how long.

Finally she finished up and smiled down at Bishop (Ripley had never been able to work out if the synthetics, despite being able to understand and even use emotion to better blend in with their comrades, but she was not sure if the android appreciated it or not), "Well the good news is, barring anything else happening, you should be easy to repair, Bishop," she said.

Bishop smiled back up at her, the sound of his lips creaking breaking through the air which was a clear sign of the amount of damage. "That's great, thanks Ripley," he gurgled.

"I'm sorry I can't put you back together..," she trailed off, but he quickly interrupted her.

"It's okay. The Sulaco labs are designed to service weapons and military equipment, and besides they're not well equipped to service androids; typical Company mentality," Bishop made a rather crude attempt at shrugging, but because he was lying down, and it looked strange since there was only the torso section of the android, it looked odd. "You'd better take me to the bridge. I can program the computer to take us out of the orbit of LV-426."

"Are you sure, Bishop?" Ripley asked, knowing her own knowledge of starship operations was over half a century out of date, but she was also concerned Bishop might be too heavily damaged after the Queen's tail impaled him and he was torn in half.

"Yes, it will be fine," the android said, a slight tinge of impatience entering his voice, "Ripley, I need to do it anyway, for my own piece of mind."

Ripley was surprised by the use of the expression, but she nonetheless helped the android to the bridge with Newt's help. After helping install the android into the data core of the ship, Ripley and Newt watched as the android deftly manipulated the computers. Thanks to her expertise working in space, though the knowledge itself may be over fifty-seven years out of date, Ripley recognised the program on the screen which showed the Sulaco's course on a three-dimensional star chart. To her surprise the android had decided to set a slingshot course around the barren rock of LV-426 before they entered light speed, she turned her head when she was about to ask Bishop why he was doing that, though she had the feeling he was doing it to plot a return course without using too much energy, when she caught sight of something on one of the computer screens. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw the screen saying "Download completed."

Computers may have moved on a bit since her heyday, but Ripley suddenly had a good idea what the download meant. "Bishop," she began quietly, "when we were down on the planet, did you upload everything to the Sulaco's computers?"

"Yes," Bishop gurgled, "why?"

"So the Company will know where the alien ship the original eggs come from?" Ripley went on.

The android let out a gurgling breath. "Yes," he replied.

"Can we purge it?" Ripley went on.

"It won't make any difference. Even if I did purge the computer of the download, the Company will send another ship to the planet," Bishop said calmly, some of his internal fluid gushing out of his mouth.

"Why did you do it?" Ripley asked angrily.

"Company procedures. In the advent of a ship or colony going dark, rescuers must upload the computer files to the rescue ship," Bishop said, "why, what's the problem?"

"Burke sent the message to the colonists to send parties out there to find the alien ship, the same ship my crew found. Think about it, Bishop. My old ship, the Nostromo, was sent to this planet on Company orders to get hold of one of those aliens and bring it back. The planet was uninhabited then. Decades later there is suddenly a colony here, atmosphere reworked to provide a home. Large population. Too much of a coincidence," Ripley explained, though everyone in the room including Newt could understand the logic.

Newt's face darkened under her smudged face. "Ripley," she began in her quiet voice, "my family and I saw the ship. My dad had one of those things attached to his face. A few days later he was dead. The Company caused it."

Ripley reacted as though she'd just been slapped. She had not even considered it had been Newt's father that was the first to suffer. She was about to ask Newt why she'd not said anything before, but she held her tongue. Newt was a haunted girl, a survivor who had only been able to hold on while everyone she had known had been killed when the aliens had snatched them. The knowledge that her father had been one of the first to die due to the infestation must have been killing her.

"I'm sorry, Newt, I didn't know-," she whispered, kicking herself but most of all she was angry with the Company for giving permission for LV-426 to be colonised by humans, not to build new homes and collect new resources which were one of the biggest reasons why Weyland-Yutani colonised new planets in the first place.

Newt just shook her head. "It's okay," she said, her eyes haunted with the memory of seeing her father lying on his back with one of those pale-yellow 'facehuggers' wrapped around his face, unaware that in a short time from then his chest would be torn apart.

"No, its not," Ripley countered, her own memories haunting her; how Dallas and Lambert had dragged Kane all the way back to the ship, Dallas screaming at her over the intercom to let them in, even though it broke the quarantine laws which had been put in place to prevent dangerous outbreaks and organisms getting to the human crews in the first place, Ash going over her head because he had known what would have happened anyway all the time, seeing that thing on Kane's face, having to hear his screams of pain as he writhed on the dining table before they were due to go into hypersleep…

Ripley had to close her eyes to shut out the memories of Kane, Brett, and Lambert as they died, she had to focus on Newt. But she couldn't since the memories haunted her. "Newt, fifty-seven years ago," she began, "my old ship, the Nostromo, visited this planet. We were brought out of hypersleep because of Company orders. We found the alien ship, and a friend and colleague of mine, Kane…. Kane had one of those face huggers attached to his face. Not long afterwards, he was killed. My entire crew went the same way," she finished, deciding there would be plenty of time if Newt wanted, for the entire story to be told, but she had decided to tell the little girl about the horrors she'd witnessed on Nostromo's last voyage.

Newt looked at her sympathetically, but before either female could speak Bishop opened his mouth. The android had been silent for the entirety of the talk.

"What happened with the Ash synthetic, Ripley? I don't know the full details," Bishop asked.

Ripley's visible flinch told her listeners this was not going to be good. "Ash knew about the alien the whole time," she said, "he knew how savage it was. Like the Company, he considered the crew expendable just so then they could have it for study, or for use in the weapons division."

Bishop could see the logic behind that idea. If the Company could weaponise the aliens, or discover enough about their biology they could create the ultimate super-warriors. But the aliens could also provide innumerable other benefits as well, but while he could understand and even agree with the Company on that stance, he also saw the dangers.

The aliens were incredibly savage, vicious. They were intelligent, yes. They were capable of learning and they had problem-solving skills. But there was no way for the Company to control them. He could see them being used in the likely probability of some kind of revolt against Company interests on one of the planets humanity had colonised. It had happened frequently over the years since Weyland-Yutani had begun sending ships out into space to colonise planets, not for their benefit of getting away from the increasingly overpopulated home planet, but for theirs. There were all kinds of exotic products just waiting in space, and the Company wanted it all. More than once, organisations like the Colonial Marine Corps had been sent out to deal with revolts because the Company had bled planets and asteroids dry.

His android brain saw the likelihood of the aliens been deployed in the egg stage of their lifecycle.

That was the most logical step since the eggs were easier to handle and there was no chance of people being killed in the initial stages, or the aliens finding a way of breaking out.

Bishop's voice broke through his processes. "When Kane was brought on board, Ash studied the alien face hugger attached to his face, but when the alien burst out of Kane's chest, he did the most minimum to help us. In the end, I found out from the ship's computer the crew had been declared expendable," she clicked her fingers bitterly, "just like that. He malfunctioned, and then he tried to kill me and my crew."

Bishop had heard the synthetic attached to Ripley's crew had gone wrong when she had seen some of his internal fluid bleed out of his hand before they went down to LV-426, but he hadn't heard the full story. It was no wonder Ripley had problems accepting androids. "That particular model was always…. wrong," Bishop actually stumbled upon the word, but he was having a lot of trouble focusing on his tasks on the ship as he was hooked up into the computer to properly think of anything stronger, "but the Ash units were always good for sleeper agent missions. I didn't even know about the aliens until we arrived at the planet."

Ripley frowned, "You didn't?"

Bishop shook what was left of his head, moving his torso as well. "No. I'm part of the Marine Corps. While the Company has influence there, their influence doesn't let them get too far."

Ripley nodded, feeling reassured but she quickly changed the subject. "Bishop, we can't let the Company get their hands on the aliens," she whispered, leaning closer to the speak to the android so she could get her point across without his attention wavering, "if they get hold of the aliens, it would mean death and destruction. These things are vicious. They're uncontrollable."

Bishop let out a sigh that sounded like he had something stuck in his throat. The sound took his human audience by surprise. "Ripley, it could be for that reason the Company want the aliens," he said, while deciding not to tell the woman he could very well understand the benefits of them himself since it wouldn't go down well and besides if he were honest, he didn't want the aliens anywhere near Weyland-Yutani, especially with their corporate greed, "and besides how would you make sure they didn't get hold of them anyway?"

"Simple. We destroy the alien ship; it can't be difficult if you've uploaded the colony database and dumped it into the main computer of the ship?" Ripley asked though she knew the android had included the whereabouts of the alien ship in the upload. She had it all worked out in her head; they would look for the alien ship using the information gathered from the colony, and then they would nuke the place from orbit.

Bishop mulled it over in his mind. He turned to Newt. "When your father had one of those parasites attached to his face, did you or your mother radio the colony for help?" he asked.

Newt was visibly surprised by the question, but she nodded. "Yes," she replied, "my mother did radio for help. I screamed when I saw the thing on my father's face," she added in an ashamed voice.

Bishop smiled at her as comfortingly as he could while Ripley hugged her. "There's nothing wrong with that," Ripley said, remembering how she herself reacted when she had been aboard the shuttle and how the alien had crept up on her.

"You had every right to be frightened," Bishop added, keeping to himself humans regularly feared what they were unfamiliar with because he knew it was inappropriate and besides Newt had grown up on a colony world in deep space light years from Earth. Anything could have awaited them on planets. Colony schools regularly told horror stories of planets where there were parasites that killed humans, so the fear was legitimate.

Newt spared the heavily damaged android a smile of thanks.

* * *

Dwayne Hicks squinted painfully through his good eye as he looked around the sickbay. The marine had been given a strong dose of drugs to counter the pain he was feeling after being injured by that thing when he and Ellen had gone to find Newt after Vasquez and Gorman detonated that grenade in the ventilation passages of the colony, and the bullets had torn through the alien's body splashing his chest armour with its acidic blood, burning through to his chest. Hicks had had his fair share of chemical burns in the past, but he had never felt anything quite like the acid the aliens used for blood.

The armour had managed to mitigate the worst of the splash of acid, but it was still close. He hadn't been conscious when Ellen had battled the Alien Queen, but if he had been, he would have blown the fucker to pieces. When he had woken up, he'd found Ellen with a Bishop who'd been torn in half, and Ellen was going around the room to Bishop, to Newt, and to himself. Dwayne knew he was on the mend, but the number of drugs he'd been given had made it difficult for him to concentrate, but he was able to tell the ship was moving slowly but he didn't know anything else.

At that point Ellen walked in (he liked being able to think of her using her first name), smiling softly at him. "Hey," she whispered.

"Hi," he whispered back, squinting at her awkwardly through one eye, he had to keep blinking just to focus on her.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

Dwayne chuckled. "Great, feeling a bit groggy, but apart from that…," he shrugged nonchalantly, but he sobered up. "What's happening? Have we left the system yet?"

Ripley's smile faded somewhat and she shifted herself awkwardly around. "No, not yet," she said, "we've got one more task to complete before we leave."

"What do you mean?" Dwayne asked curiously, he'd come to realise that Ellen Ripley was not the type of woman to leave a job unfinished, but he was curious about what she was talking about.

"Bishop uploaded the colony's database to the ship," Ellen began, "and included are the coordinates of the derelict ship the original eggs came from. That's why the Company set up Hadley's Hope. They didn't care about the colonists, they were interested in them finding the alien ship that my crew discovered years ago. It's the only known source of the Aliens. If we leave the planet now, the Company will just come back and they will get hold of that ship for their bio-weapons division."

Hicks was silent for a moment as he remembered how Burke had tried to get Ripley and Newt impregnated with those parasites. He still wasn't sure what had been going through his mind; did he really think neither of them would know what had happened to them? Ellen had already seen and encountered the face-hugging creatures before, and Newt had probably encountered them herself when the Aliens had first begun tearing her colony to pieces.

Hicks wasn't surprised with the lengths the Company were willing to go with this insane quest of theirs. It was an open secret the Company was corrupt, and Burke was the perfect example of a greedy little businessman which was a-typical of the Company; so interested in their narrow little worlds, more interested in making a quick buck rather than seeing what was in front of them. When Ripley had found out that not only had Burke known about the Aliens long before he'd even spoken to her, he had also been the one responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, she had been furious while Burke had probably not even cared. He had just made that "bad call" excuse which had sent Ripley into a rage. Hicks didn't blame her; after seeing the hive and the remains of those dead colonists, their face pale and slack with pain and moisture as they were cocooned to the walls, their chests torn open while that one remaining woman had still been alive, though Hicks knew he would have nightmares about that scene for the rest of his life, and her screams would haunt him as well.

He only hoped Dietrich and Apone had died during the nuclear explosion, the thought of the sound of their screams as their chest were torn open horrified him…

"And you want to destroy it?" he asked rhetorically, guessing what she had in mind.

"Yes," she replied simply.

"When do you want to do this?"

"Now," Ripley told him, "Bishop is programming the Sulaco's nuclear missile launchers, along with a few others to completely destroy the ship; I don't know if the nukes will completely do it, but I'm hoping it will."

Hick's nodded. "I can give you…. my access codes to make the launch easy," he whispered, his eyes fluttering as he struggled hard to concentrate.

Ripley noticed Hick's expression, seeing for herself the way his eyes were rolling back in his skull while he tried desperately to focus, and how his voice was a quiet slur, almost like he was drunk. She hated leaving him like this, but she knew she had no choice. She was just relieved the computer of the Medical Unit was automated and would look after Hicks; while she had little faith in AI after that mess with Ash, she had more faith in more simpler pieces of technology, though Bishop had certainly restored her faith. The medical computer wouldn't be able to completely heal Hicks, but it would help him. He would need to go into stasis soon to stop any chance of the wounds getting worse or being infected.

* * *

As she walked through the ship while Bishop was busy on the bridge, Ripley had decided to take a walk through the corridors and to the launch bay to make sure everything was in order but to also give herself time to think. She wished Newt was with her; it had surprised her by how much the little girl had captured her heart. She had been afraid she was merely trying to replace Amy with Newt, but the two were completely different people, and besides her motherly instincts had reared themselves up.

The Sulaco may have been fifty-seven years more advanced than what she'd been used to on the Nostromo, but thanks to the time she'd had on her hands when she'd been revived and the Company had given her the time to get used to being fifty seven years in the future (she still wasn't sure how that had happened; when she had entered hypersleep with Jones on the shuttle after blasting that one Alien out of the airlock, she had hoped the course she'd set would have seen her picked up six weeks later, but no such luck. The closest guess she had was some kind of glitch had cropped up in the navigational system, but she couldn't be sure), and her job she'd been able to learn quickly. In truth there wasn't an awful lot of difference between her era and this one - sure, the computers were faster, and there were new types of technology, the ships were different, and androids had moved on. That was it.

As she walked into the docking bay to see if the shuttle was in one piece after all the stress it had been put through, Ripley made a face when she saw the grilles the Alien Queen had ripped up to try to reach Newt. She wasn't going to try to put them back, not seeing the point. As she looked around the shuttle in a critical manner, Ripley paused when she saw something in the shuttle's starboard landing strut assembly where the Alien Queen had been in hiding before she'd torn Bishop in half. There was something in there, something small, squat…

Ripley felt a chill go down her spine, and she turned and rushed up the boarding gantry of the shuttle, thanking her lucky stars the weapons she had taken to find Newt were still scattered on the ground. She grabbed a torch and one of the assault rifles, slotting in a full clip along the way; whatever it was she'd seen hadn't moved, but she had learnt the only good Alien was a dead one, and besides she knew she needed to be sure.

Slowly and cautiously Ripley walked back to the same spot where she'd seen whatever it was, and she shone the torch. The moment the beam of light revealed what was in there, Ripley paled when she saw it.

There were two oval objects inside the space, only just about larger than a human head, with that distinctive petal-like opening on the top of them. They weren't that big compared to the ones she'd seen in the Hive when she'd gone to rescue Newt, and what she knew Kane had found originally all those years ago which only felt like a few terrible months for her, but she had no problem with recognising Alien eggs.

Ellen glared at the eggs angrily, amazed the Alien Queen had been able to lay them in such a short amount of time; she momentarily wondered if the Queen had laid them when she had been exposed to the vacuum of space, but she couldn't be sure. Ellen stared at the eggs, lifting up the heavy rifle in her hands to take aim, but she paused as she remembered the Aliens - the Queen, and the warrior/drones (she couldn't work out what they really were, and besides ever since Hudson had made that connection before his death the Aliens were like bees or ants, she had felt it logical to just call them that based on what she'd seen), and the face huggers all had acidic blood, though she wasn't sure about the eggs; she hadn't had time to really notice what happened to the ground after she'd destroyed the eggs when she'd first seen the Queen, but she didn't want to take the chance of damaging either the ship or the shuttle.

Lowering the rifle in her hands, Ripley looked around the shuttle bay for inspiration. Her eyes fell upon the airlock she'd used to help get rid of the Queen once and for all. She knew she could easily take the eggs, drop them down into the chamber, close the chamber, and then vent it out into space where the eggs would probably be burnt up in the atmosphere of LV-426. The only problem was she didn't want to touch them even if they didn't seem mature yet to pose a threat to her. Her eyes caught the storage room where she'd gone into to get into the power loader she'd used to fight the Queen as an equal, knowing there were a few others inside.

Putting the gun on the floor, Ripley stood up and spent the next few minutes preparing the airlock for the little task she had in mind for it, before she headed into the storage bay the power loaders were kept in. After clambering inside the heavy hydraulic exoskeleton, Ripley powered it up and took a few steps forwards before she confidently walked over to the shuttle and with the 'claws' she managed to pick up one of the eggs extremely gently. She had no idea what would have happened if she just grabbed it, so she decided to be as gentle as she could. Once she had picked up the first egg, she reached out with her other 'arm' and picked up the second. Once she had the two eggs, she walked over to the open cover of the airlock, and she just dropped them down. The eggs leathery hides managed to cushion the impact of the drop, but the drop caused them to split, and some strange goo leaked out of the holes. Ripley turned her power loader around and walked only a few paces away, and she began to get out of the heavy exoskeleton.

When she was free, she jumped out and ran to the control panel and closed the heavy hydraulic doors that closed the chamber. She was about to vent the chamber but decided there wasn't any point, and so she opened the space doors blasting the Alien eggs out into the vacuum of space. She didn't know much about the Alien biology, but she honestly hoped the eggs would burn in the adjusted atmosphere of LV-426.

* * *

On the bridge, Ripley watched as the hail of nuclear and conventional missiles travelled to the planet they were orbiting with mixed feelings between trepidation and extreme satisfaction. After she had blown the eggs into space, Bishop had contacted her, asking her what was happening in the shuttle bay. The android had been surprised the Queen had managed to lay two eggs, but it made sense he hadn't known about them, and Newt would have told her if she'd noticed the Queen exhibiting any strange behaviour when the thing had tried to chase her.

The android had told her he'd managed to pin down the coordinates at last, and he was preparing the missile countdown. Bishop would have been able to do it all by himself, of course, but with Hick's authorisation code, it gave him further credence.

As she watched the hail of missiles hit LV-426 where hopefully the aliens Gorman had named 'Xenomorphs' in their egg-form were finally being destroyed, Ripley couldn't help but wonder what the Company would do. She knew she had probably become their least favourite person in the universe, but she didn't care. In fact, she was tempted to join the marine corps just to get away from them; her knowledge may be out of date, but it could still be useful.

Ripley tilted her head to the side as she watched the first of the mushroom clouds sprout across the bleak surface of LV-426, relieved that, for now, the nightmare was over. She had no idea if there were more Aliens out there, but with the primary source gone forever, the Company would need to look elsewhere.

She shrugged her shoulders as she held onto Newt, her gaze falling over the little girl's face. Newt's eyes were facing forward, and there was a hint of sadness there, but there was hope there.

Hope for the future.

Still, she decided to take one last look around the Sulaco, just to make sure….

* * *

Until the next time...


End file.
